


Goob Gets a Shower

by Hawkbringer



Category: Meet the Robinsons (2007)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Abrupt Ending, Angst and Humor, Awkwardness, Bowler Hat Guy - Freeform, Cleanliness Porn, Cornelius the dad, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Goob the ex-supervillain, In the Driveway, Michael Yagoobian - Freeform, Multi, No Incest, Nudity, Post-Canon, Present Tense, Showers, Where everyone has to smell it, Work Up For Adoption, brief mention of Franny and Carl and Tiny, burning trash, future timeline, great idea Corny, making amends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:02:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25533295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: Cornelius the elder is considering contacting Yagoobian, if he can even find him in this city after everything that's changed. Once he finds him, he makes a single, swift decision. He takes him home, and insists on a shower. (Set post-movie canon in the future-timeline, both men in their 40s. Written 5th feb 2015.)
Relationships: Lewis | Cornelius Robinson/Michael "Goob" Yagoobian
Kudos: 2





	Goob Gets a Shower

Cornelius is considering contacting Yagoobian, if he can even find him in this city after everything that's changed. 

He finds him huddled in a lump in a new, larger cloak made of an old billboard from the abandoned section of town that progress hasn't reached yet, forlornly watching a Little League baseball game and shouting out the names of inattentive players by reading the backs of their shirts. Cornelius is surprised that his eyesight is even that good. 

"Goob." 

The man rolls his head instead of his eyes dramatically and replies to the stranger at his back, perhaps perfectly aware who it is, perhaps totally not. 

"Bleagh. What an awful name for a supervillain. Or, /ex/-supervillain. Not really so super now, am I? I don't even have any /plans/." He huddles tighter into his new, ridiculous cloak and Cornelius' heart breaks just a little bit. His nose rebels even more swiftly, however, and he makes up his mind as to his first step. 

"Mike, then." And now it's clear that he's been recognized, because the newly-named Mike freezes, no longer rocking back and forth to ward off the cold. 

"What are /you/ doing here?" he spits, chancing one short glance over his shoulder and starting to draw the cloak closer around himself. 

Cornelius stares back at him consideringly with eyebrows knit. "Well, honestly Mike, I kinda just wanted to /talk/ to ya." He tries to make his voice sound as informal and non-threatening as possible. He's debating offering a hand in reconciliation, but decides the shower must come first. His hands stay in his pockets. "But I really can't have a converstaion with a man who's wrapped in an old /billboard./" 

Mike's face twitches, upset, but trying to appear unaffected. He turns his nose up and hmpfs, but Cornelius takes another step forward. 

"Mike, hey. Isn't about time you took a shower, buddy?" He takes offense to the 'buddy' part, that much is clear, but he nods his head from side to side consideringly. 

"Mmyess... I suppose it is time to turn over a new leaf and all that. But, oh, where would I /find/ a free shower? The water hasn't worked in the old building for /years/." 

Cornelius shakes his head to rid himself of the mental images that sad fact conjures, and steps forward again, holding out a hand in the direction of his mansion. "We've got running water back at my place. There's even a shower in the mud room so you wouldn't even have to /really/ come inside. No one would see you, or even know you were there." He smiles tightly, pity obvious in his tone. "And I'll bring you some new clothes to wear. A billboard isn't gonna be much fun in the summer, is it?" 

Mike considers that he did rather well in the mid-spring weather of the past wherein he stalked the boy on his last day of being Lewis. 

"And they'll be clean, too. Might be a novel sensation or something like that," he trails off, not really comfortable thinking about Mike Yagoobian and /sensations/ in the same sentence. 

"Mike," he hears the pleading note in his voice and can't prevent it, "Do you even remember what a hot meal tastes like? Spaghetti? Chicken? PB-n-J?" 

Mike sniffs, face twitching less aggressively in fearenvyhatred than the previous two times. "I have /had/ PB-n-J in the past 20 years, thank you very much." His attempts to sound snooty fall perfectly flat as he realizes how much he /hasn't/ had, particularly as Cornelius steps around behind him with his arm still held out sweepingly towards his home. 

"Mashed potatoes? Gravy? Birthday cake?" 

Mike pulls up short, stopping his pacing for warmth and looking up at Cornelius, despite his superior height, with the most pathetic puppy-dog-eyed expression of longing Cornelius has seen in /almost/ his entire life. His son's rendition was better, but only up until about age 3. Then it started looking like the shrewdly-executed manipulation tactic it was. 

Mike is absolutely empty of any duplicity, which makes the expression all the more heartbreaking. Either he's gotten accustomed to the smell in the past few minutes, or he's decided it doesn't matter, but Cornelius allows his hand to settle onto Mike's shoulder and presses him eastward, towards home. 

He goes willingly, but turns his head nearly 180 degrees around on his neck, fearfully watching the unmotivated players for signs of narcolepsy. 

Cornelius rolls his eyes almost fondly and shouts towards the dug-out, "Hey Coach! Keep an eye out, would ya?" The coach startles at the sound of that famous voice and smiles broadly and waves, which Cornelius returns, Mike waving back half-heartedly, and turning from the adult's scrutiny with one long-fingered hand dragging lines into the billboard scrap around his shoulders. 

\--

Cornelius gently presses him forward and doesn't actually move his hand from the spindly-legged man's shoulder until they both duck through the too-small door to the mud room of the Robinson mansion and he leans down to untie his shoes. 

"Shoes," he throws over his shoulder as he shrugs out of his outdoor labcoat, replacing it with his indoor one. "And socks," he pops his head back into the room to add, pulling out towels and the industrial-strength soap, along with whatever types of hair goop he can get his hands on: bodywash, moisturizers, loofahs, the whole shebang. He's not sure how much will be required to turn this bedraggled and rank-smelling ex-supervillain into a decently respectable member of the household, but he's certainly going to give it his best shot. 

He waves away a well-meaning ping from Carl, certain the sensitive robot manservant would only shriek upon seeing the man and possibly alert the rest of the household. Not what any of them would want at this point. 

As the house is much warmer than the outside air, Mike slowly unties the scrap of billboard paper around his neck and folds it reverently and very neatly next to his shoes and socks. 

Cornelius rolls his eyes and doesn't correct him, hanging half out of the bathroom as the mirrors steam up from the shower currently going at a warm but not scalding temperature. He hurriedly switches places with the man of stank, affixing him with a parentally-raised eyebrow and reminding him of how baths worked when they were roommates. 

"Read the label before you try anything, don't /swallow/ any of it, no matter how good it smells, and just, wrap yourself in a towel when you're done." He points to the clock. "Take at least 20 minutes in there," he instructs sternly. "I'll be back then with a bathrobe for you to wear around the house." He grins cheekily. "And I'll be burning your clothes as soon as you hand them out to me!" He holds out a hand. "Here, give me anything from your pockets that you /don't/ want me to burn." 

Mike removes his tattered blanket cloak and hands it over, saying, "I don't... have any /pockets/." He pronounces the word like he can't picture the thing it represents. 

"Huh. Okay," Cor accepts, wadding up the old blanket and tossing it towards his shoes and socks, which might /also/ be classified as hazardous waste in some municipalities. He turns back to the crack in the door and cocks an eyebrow. "There's no way that was everything you're wearing." 

Mike looks down at his black skin-tight bodysuit. He can't really imagine /parting/ with it, but Cornelius isn't really looking like he's going to give him a /choice/. "Well, no, but..." 

"No buts, mister." And Mike is shocked at the memory of Mildred his tone inspires. She spoke to him just like that, and he always obeyed. Even when he didn't want to. And he does so now, turning around the door and stripping off his proverbial armor. He bunches it up and pokes it through the crack in the door. He feels cold and small in just the green-and-white of the Dino's that he's worn as a second skin for so long. But the room is steamy and warm and he hasn't felt anything like this in all the years he's lived in Cornelius' future. 

Then Cornelius' voice has to bust in and ruin his short-lived bliss. 

"You... were't wearing underwear?" He sounds like he doesn't want to hear the answer to that question. 

"What?" Mike snaps, eyes already glancing covetously at the line-up of hair and skin care products beside the sink. "Of /course/ I'm wearing underwear, you complete nitwit!" 

"Then hand me that too," The Father of the Future replies in a no-nonsense tone that makes Mike's blood run cold for a moment to think that someone else has heard those words, this tone, and also obeyed. Granted, that person was probably about 5 and being forced to take a bath after playing in the mud all day, but really, can Mike say this situation is much different than that? 

He lets out a wavering moan of protest, but the crack in the door is certainly quite small and he certainly can't shower effectively while wearing clothes, even the ground-in tatters of his former self. He groans again, shifting his weight from foot to foot, then grinds out, "Fine," between gritted teeth. 

He tries not to think about it as he does it, running his hands from his ears to his feet to make sure he's actually gotten all of it. There might have been something he missed? 

But his first attempt is perfectly successful, and he wads up the threadbare, sorry old snakeskin and spits, "Here," as he hurls it out the door. 

Cornelius yelps but replies, "Good, thanks." 

/I've only given you every scrap of everything I ever was./ Mike smiles despite himself. "Yeah. No problem." His melancholy can perhaps be excused. 

"Okay," Cornelius says, and Mike hates that he can /hear/ in his voice that he's /planning/, scheming, /inventing/ at this very second, hates that he's the object of his thoughts. 

Actually, he muses, idly examining the smallest of the many bottles on the sink counter, that's a lot better than being forgotten completely. 

"I'll come back and knock on the door in half an hour. That's when the big hand is on the other side of the-" 

"I know when that is!" he snarls, wiping the face of the clock clean to examine it. "You'll be back at 4:15?" He can't stand how /hopeful/ that sounded to his ears. 

Cornelius glances at one of his own timepieces. "Yep, exactly. Well, not exactly. I'll err on the side of being too late, shall I? You probably want to reacquaint yourself with what a hot shower feels like, anyway, and I'll... I'll just go, uh, burn your clothes. Like I said." 

"Well," Mike states. "Good to know you'll, ah. Be doing that." 

"Er. I wouldn't, usually. If it weren't, really, kind of necessary to comply with municipal health ordinances." 

"Oh, don't /stand/ there if you're just going to insult me!" he snaps dramatically, the old pride as comfortable a shroud as his black jumpsuit had been. "I expect your offering of /alternative/ clothing will be up to snuff, Monsieur 'father of the future'," he continues, warming to his subject. 

Cornelius, however, was getting tired of hearing the hot water go to waste, even if it /was/ solar-heated and recycled within the mansion and wouldn't really go to waste either way. "Yes, yes, of course, of course. And I hope /you/ enjoy yourself!" Fairly certain he won't hurt anything if he does it, Cornelius slams the bathroom door shut, a tiny sadistic satisfaction uncurling in his gut at the small yelp the naked Yagoobian lets out from behind it. 

To turn his thoughts manually from /any/ contemplation of the previously-suggested mental image, Cornelius takes a deep breath and plucks the scrap of billboard from the ground, unfurls it, and wraps the most disgusting of Mike's clothing up in it. 

Holding the makeshift sack like a pail full of rotting diapers, Cornelius plops it in the middle of the driveway, not at all cognizant of any possible spectators. He nips back into the garage for lighter fuel and a flint stick and watches the clothing burn with a bone-deep satisfaction he hasn't known in years. 

Slightly unsettled that even sex with his wife hasn't made him feel as good as burning his ex-roommate's clothing in the middle of his driveway has, Cornelius checks his watch as the smell burns away with the wind. Plenty of time remains for him to fetch at least a bathrobe for his newest houseguest and he's halfway up the stairs to the second floor's master bathroom when he realizes what all this means. 

It's practically impossible for the family to let anyone go before they've at least had a meal and possibly also a serenade from Franny's Frog Band. Plus, they have Yagoob - /Mike/ - to thank for their new T-Rex, which gets on surprisingly well with the butler now that they've decided to fight as family, not as enemies. Perhaps Mike would like to meet Tiny and say something about the whole debacle. Though how much a T-Rex can understand of apologies is debatable. 

Cornelius puts a hand to his face, messing up his glasses, as he returns one of Franny's bathrobes to its previous place. Aside from his houseguest's possibly abusive past with the T-Rex they now call their 'guard dog,' he has another awkward problem. No man in the house has quite the same stature as Mike Yagoobian. Uncle Joe owns no bathrobes, as far as he knows, and Lazlo, Fritz and Gaston are all, to his horror, actually shorter than Mike. Art is perhaps the only one who might match him in height, but there's that unfortunate paunch Mike's developed after a few decades of eating... He has no idea what Mike's been eating. Whatever it was, it /has/ kept him alive for the past thirty or so years... 

Cornelius yields to the necessity and removes a bathrobe from his own closet since knowing why he did it will keep him from doing a double-take every time he'll see it on someone other than Franny. In any case, he picks out the plain white one, since it'll be easy to bleach later if anything goes wrong. 

Shaking his head at himself for picturing nightmare scenarios where none yet exist, Cornelius does get held up for a few minutes, discussing a secret guest that he wants a cot made up for in the inventing room with Carl, who was suspicious about the brush-off he got earlier. Cornelius promises to bring the guest down to dinner and introduce him properly, but at the moment, he wants to spare him the hustle and bustle of an unscripted meeting, as his guest is rather shy. 

Carl walks off to prepare the requested cot with a parting shot of, "Phew, he's gonna have a hard time fitting in around here!" 

Cornelius chews on his lower lip as he hustles towards the mud room, finding himself there in plenty of time. He decides against laying the bathrobe on the floor outside the door because, really? It's the Robinson family mudroom. It's a frickin' dirty floor. So he pulls the robe on over his labcoat - it fits him perfectly, after all - and spends the next several minutes cleaning the floor. It's dirty but satisfying work and by the time 4:15 clicks into existence on his wristwatch, the shower has stopped running. 

Nearly panicking, Cor hustles to the bathroom's door and knocks. An unamused "Yes?" drawls out from behind it. 

Relieved in a way he doesn't want to examine too closely, Cornelius hurriedly shucks the bathrobe from his shoulders as he shouts, "I've got a bathrobe for you. I /think/ it'll fit. Here, try it on." He holds the bathrobe, now streaked with dirt at the knees, out towards the doorjamb. It doesn't open. 

"Uh, Mike?" 

"Yes?" comes drawled out again. He doesn't sound angry or particularly upset so Cornelius can't understand his obstinacy. 

"Um. Do you want to open the door now, or....?" 

"Why, yes, since you asked so nicely, I think I shall!" 

Cornelius rolls his eyes and catches a glimpse of Mike's face as he extends a hand to take the robe. It's still a strange, lumpy rectangular shape, still just as hook-nosed and stubble-chinned, but the hot water and whatever he has since put on his face has removed a great deal of the strange green and grey color, though pronounced bags under his cheeks remain. The wetted-down flatness of his hair aids in reducing his threatening appearance. 

A few seconds later, the door opens and a white-swaddled Mike Yagoobian, 30 years too late, stands in his bathroom, water dripping from his nose as he holds a lavender scented /something/ under his nostrils. 

It's about the funniest sight Cornelius has seen all year, tied with Gaston hanging half upside down from the chandelier after losing a food fight with his wife once at dinner. The frogs had pranced all over his upturned backside and one managed to do the trombone part for an entire song with its legs securely locked around one of his boots. Franny had been laughing too hard to call them off any sooner.

**Author's Note:**

> Written 5th Feb 2015. Sorry for the abrupt ending! T_T I just had no idea what to do with them after Goob was clean... there are too many personalities in the Future-Robinson family for me to wanna deal with, I guess. Probably intended as a slow-burn, since Cornelius IS happily married at this point, but I am a firm believer in the polyamorous potential of this group.   
> I'm actually really, really surprised there isn't any pairing-fic of THESE TWO in the Archive!


End file.
